1. Technical Field
An aspect of the present invention relates to a sheet feeding device to convey a sheet in a sheet feeding path.
2. Related Art
A sheet feeding device to be provided to, for example, an image forming apparatus such as a printer and a copier, having a base structure, one or more pairs of conveyer rollers arranged in positions along a feeding path, is known.
In the sheet feeding device, each of the conveyer rollers has a core shaft to be rotatably supported by the base structure and rollers which are fixed to the core shaft to be rotated along with the core shaft. The pair of conveyer rollers are thus rotated with the sheet in-between them so that the sheet is conveyed in the feeding path by the rotating force of the rollers. The sheet conveyed in the feeding path is led to an image forming unit of the image forming apparatus to have an image formed thereon.
When the conveyer rollers are rotated in the image forming apparatus by external driving force, the core shafts of the conveyer rollers may be subject to pressure of the driving force, and the conveyer rollers may be bowed by the pressure. When the conveyer rollers are bowed, the sheet may be conveyed in a skewed orientation with respect to the feeding path and may cause sheet feeding errors such as sheet jam. The error condition in the sheet may prevent the image forming unit from correctly forming the image on the sheet. Therefore, in order to restrict the deformation of the conveyer rollers, the feeding device may be provided with arm-pieces extending in a direction perpendicular to the core shafts and hooked to the core shafts at one end and fixed to the base structure at the other end so that the arm-pieces suppress the core shafts.